Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Plato condemns imitative art
I came across with this educational blog where a teacher asks the students to read an excerpt of Plato's Republic and answer one of the five questions.
The answers are very good and I did chose this one to share with you because it is a issue that is still discussed: art and representation of reality.
1. Plato criticizes art that is “imitative.” What exactly does Plato mean by “imitative” art? And why is he so critical of it?
Plato believes that art is imitative because it is a representation of an object’s true form. The question and answer between Socrates and Glaucon in Plato’s Republic explains this concept with the example of a bed. God designed the ideal of a bed; He is “the author of this and of all other things” (Section I). A craftsperson will make a functional representation of this bed, the bed that humans will actually sleep on. While this crafstperson is a secondary maker of God’s original plan, the artist is accordingly a tertiary maker. The artist is removed from the forms, or “perfect ideals” (Plato’s Aesthitcs) that constitute all earlthy things. For examply, as is outlined in Plato’s Aesthitcs, the mathematical idea of a circle varies greatly from the human representation of one.
Humans cannot recreate a mathematically proportional circle, because the measurements will always be slightly off. Therefore a true circle only exists in an ideal or Godly universe, not on Earth. Accordingly, Plato’s philosophies argue that the same concept would ring true with the artist’s representation of a bed. Since even the crafsperson’s recreation of a bed is not totally accurate or Godly, an artist’s drawing, painting, or other creative expression of a bed will be even farther removed from the original divine design.
Plato was critical of imitative art because he believed that it led humans away from the real or true forms in the universe, in other words, from the ideal of God. Plato describes artists and poets in Republic; “they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach” (Section II). Creative expression could be dangerous because it would lead humans away from focusing their attentions on the otherworldy, leading them into temptation instead of towards God.
"Mimesis", μίμησις (mīmēsis), is the Greek concept for imitation and we will see it in another post.
Plato's Allegory of the Cave
This allegory is learned at the beginning of any course on philosophy and raises many interpretations and discussions.The Allegory of the Cave
"Plato recognized that the picture of the Divided Line may be difficult for many of us to understand. Although it accurately represents the different levels of reality and corresponding degrees of knowledge, there is a sense in which one cannot appreciate its full significance without first having achieved the highest level. So, for the benefit of those of us who are still learning but would like to grasp what he is talking about, Plato offered a simpler story in which each of the same structural components appears in a way that we can all comprehend at our own level. This is the Allegory of the Cave.
Suppose that there is a group of human beings who have lived their entire lives trapped in a subterranean chamber lit by a large fire behind them. Chained in place, these cave-dwellers can see nothing but shadows (of their own bodies and of other things) projected on a flat wall in front of them. Some of these people will be content to do no more than notice the play of light and shadow, while the more clever among them will become highly skilled observers of the patterns that most regularly occur. In both cases, however, they cannot truly comprehend what they see, since they are prevented from grasping its true source and nature. (Republic 514a)
Now suppose that one of these human beings manages to break the chains, climb through the torturous passage to the surface, and escape the cave. With eyes accustomed only to the dim light of the former habitation, this individual will at first be blinded by the brightness of the surface world, able to look only upon the shadows and reflections of the real world. But after some time and effort, the former cave-dweller will become able to appreciate the full variety of the newly-discovered world, looking at trees, mountains, and (eventually) the sun itself.
Finally, suppose that this escapee returns to the cave, trying to persuade its inhabitants that there is another, better, more real world than the one in which they have so long been content to dwell. They are unlikely to be impressed by the pleas of this extraordinary individual, Plato noted, especially since their former companion, having travelled to the bright surface world, is now inept and clumsy in the dim realm of the cave. Nevertheless, it would have been in the best interest of these residents of the cave to entrust their lives to the one enlightened member of their company, whose acquaintance with other things is a unique qualification for genuine knowledge.
Plato seriously intended this allegory as a representation of the state of ordinary human existence. We, like the people raised in a cave, are trapped in a world of impermanence and partiality, the realm of sensible objects. Entranced by the particular and immediate experiences these things provide, we are unlikely to appreciate the declarations of philosophers, the few among us who, like the escapee, have made the effort to achieve eternal knowledge of the permanent forms. But, like them, it would serve us best if we were to follow this guidance, discipline our own minds, and seek an accurate understanding of the highest objects of human contemplation."
Source: Philosophy pages.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Who are the Barbarians? - Tzvetan Todorov
When I was at college I learned from Tzvetan Todorov some important aspects of the fantastic reading his book: "The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre".
By that time two of my favorites writers, Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, were classified as fantastic and Gabriel Garcia Marques was translated to many languages.
But it is not about his work as literary theorist that I want to share with you. It is about his work as a deeply concerned man that is writing books to try to make some sense in the way the world is being conducted.
He has published "Fear of the Barbarians: beyond the clash of civilizations" that will be released in English next month. These are some of the subjects he approaches:
He has published "Fear of the Barbarians: beyond the clash of civilizations" that will be released in English next month. These are some of the subjects he approaches:
"But who are these barbarians? Tzvetan Todorov questions Claude Levi-Strauss’ definition of the barbarian as “the man who believes in barbarism” and suggests: “It is someone who believes that a population or an individual is not fully human and therefore merits treatment that he would resolutely refuse to apply to himself.” In his recent The Fear of Barbarians (10), Todorov develops an argument he presented in earlier works such as On Human Diversity (a thought-provoking book that deserves to be far more widely read). “The fear of barbarians,” he writes now, “is what is in danger of turning us into barbarians. And the evil that we do will far exceed what we initially fear.”
Only the individual who fully recognizes the humanity of others can be called civilized." (emphasis mine)
Keep reading.
"These conceptual tools enable him to shed fresh light on the current struggle against terrorism and the tensions between communities within Western countries. He invites us to overcome our fears - for fear is a dangerous motive and risks producing an evil that is worse than the evil we initially feared.And this is a translation from a video at Youtube:
Richly illustrated with examples ranging from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the Danish cartoons, this powerful plea for civilized values will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the key challenges facing the world today." (emphasis mine)
"... culturally a nation is never something perfectly homogeneous. It's made by women and men, young and old people, rich and poor, people of profiles totally differents.I did the translation from French of these two excerpts. He speaks English and I don't understand why there is not a single video in English.
You and me during a day we change languages three or four times. We speak differently to our neighbors, to children's at schools, in front of our students, in the television... without any problem. We have to stop living in the illusion that culture have to be the same for everybody. (emphasis mine)
In reality there is no religious war. Wars have always political reasons. Combats for power, for wealth, demographic reasons, because of the country's resource, but religion is only the mask that we give to these combats because it mobilizes deep strengths of each and everybody."
"It's through fear that the most unacceptable actions are carried out"
Tzvetan Todorov
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